Text-message fees recommended for antitrust scrutiny June 23, 2009
Reporting from Washington — The chairman of a Senate panel on antitrust issues on Tuesday called on the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department to scrutinize competitiveness in the cellphone industry, pointing to a 100% increase in some text messaging charges by four companies that control most of the market.
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin) said that from 2006 to 2008, the price charged by the four biggest carriers for sending and receiving such messages rose from 10 cents to 20 cents.
And the increases seemed to occur in “lock step” — first from 10 cents to 15 cents and then from 15 cents to 20 cents, with each set of increases occurring within a period of months or even weeks, said Kohl, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights.
“Are these price increases the result of a lack of competition in a highly concentrated market?” Kohl asked.
As a result of consolidation in recent years, four companies — Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. — control 90% of the cellphone market, with Verizon and AT&T accounting for 60% between them.
Appearing before Kohl’s subcommittee at a hearing Tuesday, executives from AT&T and Verizon said per-message rates applied only to the 1% of text messages not covered by package plans. The price of messages covered by plans declined, the companies said.
Read the full article at LA Times
- Posted in : Uncategorized, Mobile Marketing, SMS News, Mobile Technology
- Author : Roni
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?